Reading the Rift: Countering Your Opponents
Riftblade’s core game foregoes instants and counterspells to enable even beginning players to chain action-packed spells into every turn with minimal downtime. But what your opponent does in Riftblade is still vitally important and the opportunities to adapt and disrupt an opponent are around every turn. By understanding your opponent's strategy based on the spells they acquire, you can actively counter their plan and seize control. Let's explore how to dismantle common strategies.
Countering Chaotic Draw
Fate’s Twist, Wild Surge, and Chaos Rift are all amazing Chaos cards, but stuffing your deck with too many of these can significantly dampen your damaging capabilities.
Chaos magic excels at massive card draw, potentially filling your opponent's hand with options. It's tempting to fight draw with discard with Infernal cards like Burning Hex, but a dedicated Chaos deck often draws faster than you can make them discard.
Chaos’s Weaknesses: Chaos decks are often limited by Riftstone rolls (can't play everything they draw), lack free spells, and high card draw doesn't always equal high impact or damage. A hand of 10 cards is useless without the dice to play them.
Your Playbook:
Focus Pure Damage: Ignore their card advantage. If they spend turns playing low-impact draw spells (like when they combo Fate’s Twist into Wild Surge and Chaos Rift for all of three damage), take note of the low ceiling they’ve put on their damage and seize the advantage.
Deny Key Damage Cards: If you can splash Chaos, prioritize taking their efficient Chaos damage/utility cards (Chaotic Pulse, Manic Fate). This disrupts their ability to convert draw into threats. If you can’t, then manipulate the Rift to limit their ability to synergize other Aspects and acquire higher damage cards.
Draining the Soul Siphon
Soul magic's Siphon effects drain your life while healing them, with powerhouses like Rift Leech offering huge life swings. However, Siphon effects are expensive, slowing their deck building and tempo and Soul magic often has lower raw damage output per turn compared to other Aspects.
Your Playbook:
Primary Counter: Infernal Burn: Aggressive discard cripples expensive Soul strategies. If they can't keep key Siphon cards in hand, their engine sputters. Smart Soul players will blend in Chaos draw to negate your Burn. Be prepared to deny them key draw cards (especially multi-draw like Wild Surge) via Triggering or refreshing The Rift.
Strategic Void Investment: Because Soul decks can be slower, consider investing in Void spells early. This provides Mana to outpace their engine and crucial Aspect flexibility, making it easier to pivot into Infernal, or another counter, once you confirm their strategy.
Absorbing Infernal Burn
Infernal decks aim to shred your hand with Burn/discard effects, leaving you resource-starved and unable to execute your strategy. Chaos magic is an obvious counter that provides the raw card draw needed to replenish your hand faster than they can empty it. However, simply having draw isn't enough; how you play matters immensely.
Flame Gate and Searing Wrath are strong burn spells. If you see your opponent picking up more than one or two of these, it’s definitely time to keep a buffer of cards in your hand at the end of every turn.
Your Playbook:
The "Keep 3 Rule": Against heavy Burn, resist the urge to play out your entire hand for maximum damage in a single turn unless you’ve just seen them unload their heavy hitters. As a general rule, aim to end your turn with three cards remaining so you draw to a maximum hand size and provide yourself with significant burn resistance. (Yes, it stings when your opponent draws that insane six burn turn, but don’t let this miracle dictate your strategy.)
Damage Rush: If you are successful in mitigating the discard effect, you’ll notice Burn decks do you little harm. Every point of damage coming from burn is expensive, and it’s easy to outpace them through pure attack. If you’re careful, be willing to throw in a bit of burn yourself—nothing like fighting fire with fire—but don’t overcommit against an opponent who has a developed a significant head start.
Overwhelming Celestial Stall
Dedicated Celestial decks (often paired with Void) can heal significant amounts each turn, making chip damage feel utterly futile and trying to out-heal or out-sustain a dedicated Celestial deck with your own healing is usually a losing battle.
Your Playbook:
Option 1: Infernal Disruption: If your deck allows, leaning into heavy Burn can starve their healing engine by removing key Celestial spells from their hand before they can be played. Celestial does not connect to Chaos magic directly, so players will always need to navigate through either Infernal or Void magic to get there, which is a tough balancing act when your house is burning down around you.
Option 2: The "Rainbow Burst" Strategy: Forget incremental damage. Focus on building towards turns of massive, overwhelming burst damage that surpasses their healing capacity in a single blow. This requires two steps:
Acquire High-Impact Spells: Collect powerful, high-cost damage spells from multiple Aspects (e.g., Chaotic Pulse, Scattered Ash, Soul Scorch, Oblivion).
Embrace Inconsistent Turns: Accept that some turns might be suboptimal as you chain available Aspects (e.g., full Infernal/Void one turn, leaving Soul/Chaos cards unused). This builds towards a subsequent turn where you unleash a multi-Aspect combo for huge damage. As you acquire these finishers, use deck thinning (Wild secondary) to remove lower-impact cards.
Punishing Max Mana
Some opponents choose to focus heavily on mana generation early, aiming for an unstoppable late-game economy, but this strategy sacrifices early-game tempo and damage. They need the game to go long to pay off.
When your opponent packs their deck with heavy mana cards like Restoration, they need to draw the game out. The longer the game goes, the more heavily they are able to stack their deck with powerhouses like Rift Leech and Soul Scorch.
Your Playbook:
Deny Them the Late Game: Aggro Rush! Apply relentless pressure from turn one by consistently prioritizing double-damage spells (Manic Fate, Infernal Pact, Starstrike) and be prepared to Trigger Aggressively, using your mana to Trigger cheap damage spells directly from The Rift whenever possible (Dark Harvest, Divine Fire, Void Snap). Starve them of life before their economy comes online.
(Optional) Mind Games: If you see heavy mana investment, subtly feign being impressed or intimidated. Encouraging them to over-invest in mana can sometimes seal their fate faster. By the time they realize they lack damaging threats, it's often too late.
The Final Tempering: Interaction Through Adaptation
In Riftblade’s core game, countering your opponent isn't about impressive counterspells. Instead, it's a dynamic dance of observation and adaptation. By reading the Aspects your opponent favors and understanding the inherent weaknesses of that strategy, you can pivot your acquisitions, deny key cards through purchases or refreshes, and even adjust your fundamental playstyle (like hand management vs. Burn) to dismantle their plan. Stay vigilant, adapt intelligently, and you'll find you have all the tools you need to control the battle. Happy Dueling, Riftblades!
